[This is the premier issue of CPU, an online publication about
working in the computer industry. Subscriptions to CPU are
available via the cpsr.org listserver (see the ABOUT BOX below for
the how-to). We encourage comments, suggestions and articles.
Thanks for the microseconds....

CPU is a moderated forum dedicated to sharing information among
workers in the computer industry.

This is an electronic journal for all of us who work in the
broadly-defined "computer industry." We believe that its time to
begin the dialog, to start sharing information about the work that
we do, to discover the common ground among us, and to begin to
articulate and advance _our_ interests in the computer industry.
Within that general framework, there's lots to discuss.

What do we hope to do with CPU? We want to make sure that this
digest covers all strata. There are many issues facing computer
workers: compensation, job security, "contingency" work, working
conditions, contracts, discrimination, and on-the-job civil
liberties -- just to name a few. For this newsletter to work --
for the dialog to begin -- we need your input. We would especially
like to have anecdotal stories about the work you do. Also, news
stories, observed trends, and how you hold your own at work are
welcome. At some point we hope to carry-out grassroots polls and
surveys that reflect how working people view industry issues. The
possibilities are many.

This newsletter is the product of a working group of the Berkeley
Chapter of Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility. At
some point, we expect this will become a national working group.
Finally, we are indebted to the work that Jim Thomas and Gordon
Meyer have done with the Computer Underground Digest as a model of
online publishing.

[Note: The following are the opening remarks given at a panel
discussion on working in the computer industry, presented at the
Directions and Implications of Advanced Computing - '92 Conference
held in Berkeley on May 3, 1992. While the job loss numbers cited
are dated (they have gone up), the main points still hold. - ed.]

The last year-and-a-half has been a bit of a rude awakening for
people working in the computer industry. Waves of layoffs have
hammered the computer industry and the list of job losses is a
gruesome one: 20,000 jobs cut at IBM in 1991, another 20,000 in
'92 (meaning that IBM will have lost 25 percent of its workforce
since 1986). 10,000 jobs cut at Unisys, 9,000 announced at DEC.
Groupe Bull in Europe: 7 of its 13 factories closed, 5,000 workers
laid off. 2,000 at Hewlett Packard; 1,500 (10 percent) at Apple.
1,000 at Data General. 700 at Tandem. 20 percent of Chips &
Technologies. 14 percent of Pyramid Technology. Overall, more
than 90,000 jobs have been lost in the electronics industry over
the past year.

The people whose jobs have been terminated are often referred to
as "fat" that is "trimmed", to make a company "leaner". Or
euphemisms like "downsizing", or "reducing cost structures" are
used in corporate-speak to describe these changes, masking the
enormous toll these actions take on the workers who lose their
jobs.

Besides job security, other issues have surfaced in the computer
industry workplace. Potential VDT dangers, repetitive stress
injuries, and other mental and physical stress-related illnesses
have appeared. The absence of civil liberties in the workplace is
a longstanding problem. And traditional problems related to glass
ceilings and other forms of discrimination persist.

Who is looking out for the interests of the worker in the computer
industry? After all, the companies -- the employers -- have their
associations, like the Semiconductor Industry Association or the
Software Publishers Association. They conduct surveys among
themselves as to what is the going rate for, say, an entry level
programmer in the Midwest that is versed in C with a college
degree and little or no work experience, in a company with 51 to
100 employees. And employers look for new tools and techniques
that can cut their engineering costs. This quote was taken from
the September 20, 1991 Business Week editorial titled "A Great
Leap for software -- and Business": "There's already evidence that
object-oriented programming can help corporate computing
departments reduce the outlandish amounts of money and time spent
on creating their own programs. This could spell substantial
savings, since corporations now spend most of their information-
technology budgets on software -- about 60% more than they spend
on hardware, according to market researchers." These "savings"
that they are talking about, of course, are jobs lost, since
programming is a notoriously labor-intensive activity. Beyond
object-oriented programming is CASE technology.

Then there's the idea of what might be called the gumby working
class -- the widespread use of temporary and contract labor.
Here's a quote from an Olsten Temporary Services ad:

Upturns, downturns, recessions, depressions, sudden recoveries and
slumps. Companies that can't bend with change are companies that
can't survive it. Olsten has the solution: flexibility. With
Olsten's Flexible Workforce, you can reduce overhead and improve
efficiency by utilizing people only when you need them. During
slower periods, maintain a core staff of full time workers. During
peak periods, supplement that staff with Olsten temporary
workers...

And of course, we all hope to be part of that full-time core...

And then there's the time-honored technique of moving work to
lower wage areas, like Apple locating its tech support operations
in Texas, and building its new factory in Colorado; or companies
shipping work to offshore labor markets, and I don't just mean
manufacturing, but research, design and technical support work as
well.

So again, who looks out for us?

To broaden the scope wider, we could look at the nature of work in
general in the "knowledge economy". The Harvard Business Review
article last summer on the "Computerless Computer Company"
identifies design and integration work -- knowledge work -- as the
key source of value in the contemporary economy. Computer
engineers occupy a strategic position in this economy, a
relatively well-paid, high-skilled strata of the workforce.

At the same time, a wide range of technologies that we help to
produce are eliminating millions of low- or no-skilled jobs. The
same or greater quantities of commodities are produced with fewer
workers. Whole sections of the population are cast out of
production, they are neither consumers or producers, they are
consigned socially to homelessness, prisons, or shrinking welfare
payments, or forced to work for food and shelter through modern
day forms of slavery like workfare or prison labor.

Abundance coexists with incredible poverty. The "working class" is
bifurcating into an employed, high-skilled strata, and an
impoverished marginally employed or unemployed strata, into an
information rich and information poor, knowledge rich and
knowledge poor. The rage in Los Angeles and many other cities over
the last few days indicates the social cost of this polarization.

There is the question of how the design workers -- the
programmers, system analysts, technical writers, graphic designers
etc. relate to all of the other workers who are equally necessary
to the production of a chip or a computer or a software program:
the clerical staff, the production workers, and yes, even the
janitors.

And finally, there is the whole baggage of attitudes about the
work itself, its oftentimes addictive nature, where it seems
impossible to walk away from the machine, with its absorbing
challenges and its tar baby puzzles, or the culture that grows up
around that kind of work. Where the notion of waking up at the
terminal is a sign of true dedication to the craft. At the Apple
Developers Conference, they celebrate this kind of culture by
providing in the lobby heavily caffeinated drinks like Jolt cola
and mountain dew as a self-conscious recognition of the
programming guild. We are geeks and nerds, and proud of it.

So, as the computer industry matures, questions surface that have
faced other industries for decades. To name just a few of the
questions that we can (and should) address: What is the nature of
the work that we do? Is the nature of engineering and design work
really so different from other kinds of work? How do computer
industry workers resolve the conflicting, often self-imposed
demands between their status as "professional" and as "worker"? In
what ways is the situation of workers in the computer industry
similar (or different) to other workers with regards to job
security, layoffs, health and safety, and organization? Do [am I
still allowed to say this word?] -- unions -- have a place in the
computer industry? Again, who looks out for us?

Headhunters refer to the practice as body-shopping. Company
personnel managers call it, in their impersonal syntax,
"outsourcing," as if they were ordering so many spare parts.

However it is termed, the resort to low-cost producers overseas,
which drained thousands of well-paying industrial jobs from the
U.S. in the 1980s, is building momentum in the software
programming field. In their continual urge to cut costs, U.S.
corporations are turning off-shore to hire the growing pool of
qualified programmers and engineering that exist in India, Ireland
and other industrializing countries.

Economists say the shift has accelerated in the recession as
companies have tried to hold down costs. The trend impacts not
just the software-makers themselves but Fortune 1000 companies
with their custom programming and internal software support
requirements. Just how many U.S. software programmers are losing
potential jobs is impossible to pin down, though labor market
specialists say they are increasingly concerned. Corporate
figures are sketchy and self-serving, leaving government
statisticians at a loss to say just how widespread the trend has
become.

Recently, though, a handful of news stories have begun to sketch
one aspect of the long-suspected, though little documented
practice among software companies. A loophole in U.S. immigration
laws allows thousands of computer programmers and analysts to
enter the United States each year on temporary business visas,
Immigration and Naturalization Service officials say. The problem
with these visas, according to State Department and immigration
officials, is that a long-standing practice aimed at easing
bureaucratic obstacles for short business trips is being abused by
"job shops" to bring technicians into this country. Typically, the
companies bid to provide computer services and bring in workers
under the business visas or use workers they have already brought
in under those visas. The visas are granted for short periods,
usually up to six months, but may be extended once the worker
arrives. The visas are intended for business people coming here to
negotiate contracts or to attend conferences, or perhaps for
highly specialized workers entering the country briefly to install
equipment -- not for general computer work.

Racially-charged stories such as "Foreigners take jobs on shaky
visas" appearing March 8 in the _San Francisco Examiner_ business
section, paint a picture of huddled immigrants and shylock
recruiters as the source of unemployment in the software industry.
The stories encourage the belief that reforming the visa approval
process will preserve jobs for programmers in the U.S. However,
abuse of the visa program is only a limited cause of the actual
job loss.

The visa controversy ignores the whole issue of low-wage off-shore
development by multinational companies that is responsible for the
ratcheting down of living standards at every level of the U.S.
computer industry. For instance, the leading contract programming
supplier, Tata Consultancy Services, with offices in both San
Francisco and Sunnyvale, is a part of Tata Sons, Ltd., India's
largest industrial conglomerate, the owner of steel, chemical,
financial, hotel, telecommunication and power companies. Indeed,
Tata, Wipro Systems, Blue Star and other Indian-owned recruiters
operating in the Bay Area are outposts for India's largest
computer makers. While India's internal market for computers has
remained slow to develop, these companies have developed their
export business consisting largely of "manpower contracts" in
which Indian firms provide comparatively cheap programmers for
projects overseas. India's 200,000 computing professionals include
many with a strong foundation in Unix and state of the art
development environments. The going monthly wage in India for a
Unix programmer is less than $400 a month.

A 1989 World Bank report about the global development of the
software industry noted that the days of sending subcontractors
abroad to the United States are numbered due to travel costs and
new technologies. "A newer approach is for a firm to send
software 'diagnosticians' abroad to assess user requirements and
then return home to design, program, and debug the application,"
writes author Robert Schware.

Quantifying the scope of contract programming for Western
companies is difficult, due to the complexities of putting a price
on work done overseas that is incorporated into finished products
sold in the United States. One group that tries is the New Delhi-
based National Association of Software and Services Companies, a
trade group, which estimates that in 1992, the export of software
and related computer services jumped 67 percent from the year
before to $144 million (U.S.), and will rise to $350 million by
1995.

Bangalore, a Southern Indian city rapidly becoming known as that
country's Silicon Valley, is one leg of an emerging strategic
business triangle, beginning in the U.S. with systems
specifications design, leading to India, especially Bangalore, for
offshore coding, then heading to East Asia for manufacturing
engineering before returning to this country as finished products.
Having demonstrated the benefits of offshore programming for
medium- to large-scale software development, suppliers are now
examining new markets such as handling all the conversion work
required when companies upgrade systems.

U.S. computer makers -- many of which have made headlines with
large-scale lay-offs in the U.S. -- have set up export operations
in Bangalore include IBM, Texas Instruments, Digital Equipment,
Hewlett Packard, 3M, Motorola and Hughes Software Systems. Texas
Instruments Inc. operates a 100 percent export-only software
development center in Bangalore linked via an integrated, real-
time computer and satellite communications network to Dallas and
London. Products can be written and tested at a fraction of the
cost in the United States. Chip designs, for example, are then
transmitted to sites in the Far East where the designs are then
set in silicon. World Bank economist Schware projects that local
and global networks such as this one may further promote the
design and development of software in newly industrializing
economies.

Last year, the World Bank surveyed 150 prominent U.S. and European
hardware and software manufacturers to determine what they
considered the most lucrative newly industrializing countries in
which to locate software development centers. Executives ranked
Indian programmers as the No. 1 source for both on-site and off-
shore software programming. For offshore work -- carried out for
overseas clients -- the survey went on to list Ireland as second,
followed by Hungary, Mexico and Singapore.

Noticeably missing from the list were several other Eastern
European countries, including Russia, with a large pool of highly-
educated engineers and scientists. With an economy in shambles,
they are tender prey for U.S. research and development directors
eager to cut costs. Though offshore programming is typically
associated with routine coding tasks, displaced scientists in
Eastern Europe and Russia are enlisted for an increasing number of
U.S.-backed system design projects and other types of research.

Perhaps the most widely-known story -- and one commonly celebrated
as a demonstration of Russian entrepreneurialism -- is the fairy
tale rise of Alexei Pajitnov, creator of the addictive geometric
game Tetris. In 1989, Pajitnov and a partner, Vladimir I.
Pokhilko, struck a deal with Bullet-Proof Software, a game company
in Redmond, Washington. The pair hired a team of 15 scientists in
Moscow and set to work on a new project that would automatically
generate animated life-forms. Pokhilko is quoted in _Scientific
American's_ July, 1992 issue as saying that, "Some people took the
job just to survive."

In two other widely-reported examples, Sun Microsystems opened a
software design center in Moscow while Borland International made
use of a Hungarian development team to create the initial versions
of Quattro (now known as QuattroPro), the company's spreadsheet
application. Sun's involvement is the most elaborate. In March,
1992 Sun set up what is known as the Moscow Center of SPARC
Technology, contracting for basic research with supercomputer
designer Boris Babaian, described as the "Seymour Cray of the
Russian computer industry." Two other teams in St. Petersburg and
Novosibirsk have been hired to work on the Sparcompiler FORTRAN
and the Sparcompiler Pascal products sold by SunPro, the software
development arm of Sun. The _New York Times_ noted that the
Russian programmers would be paid "bargain-basement wages ... of a
little more than their current salary of a few hundred dollars a
year in American dollars." "We think this can be a precedent for
other research-and-development-intensive companies," said Scott
McNealy, president, CEO and chairman of Sun Microsystems.

U.S. companies don't necessarily need to go overseas themselves to
access low-wage Russian and Eastern European skills. Labor brokers
such as Michael DeLyon, president of Intercontinental Software in
Palo Alto, match U.S. companies in need of software assistance
with seasoned programmers in Eastern Europe. He claims to have as
many as 600 software programmers working for him out of offices in
Moscow, Sofia and Prague. "We work with only the top 1 percent of
the programming population," he told _CPU_ recently.

"They offer awesome scientific skills at a fraction of the cost,"
says DeLyon, a Bulgarian native trained in a Russian engineering
polytechnic and a graduate of Stanford Business school. His
employees are conversant with C++, Windows and Unix and work for
him on an as-needed basis. "We're the leader in developing
relations with Eastern Europe and Russia," he asserts. "We
started small but now we are working with the biggest companies --
household names," he says. "They're inherently more conservative
organizations so I won't mention names." He also refuses to
disclose the company's finances. The emigre entrepreneur did say,
however, that he "very consciously" models his business on the
success of Indian-owned body shops in Silicon Valley.

The globalization of software development ought to be good for
everybody, DeLyon maintains. "Good for the companies because they
get inexpensive talent; good for programmers because they get to
work on exciting projects; good for my company because I can do
both good and well," he summarizes. Most of the work he contracts
for in Silicon Valley is performed in Eastern Europe. Only
occasionally does he import programmers. He says he then hires
project managers from among the large number of Russian immigrants
living in the Bay Area to oversee the visiting programmers.

The attractions for U.S. companies to off-shore developers varies
from country to country. Since the 1970s, U.S. computer companies
have gravitated to the Republic of Ireland with the lures of cheap
labor, a well-educated work force, proximity to European markets
and generous tax inducements. Electronic manufacturers led by
computer makers contribute a significant chunk of Ireland's
exports. Oracle, Motorola, Ericcson, Amdahl and Electronic Data
Systems lead a posse of international employers that develop
software for export from Ireland. Software sales account for 10
percent of Irish exports, or $1.5 billion a year, according to
Irish Trade Ministry figures. The country's salary structure is
far lower than in the United States. "Ireland is fast becoming the
gateway to Europe for U.S. software developers," noted a Feb. 1992
_MacWeek_ article. Yet companies are also increasingly taking on
original design projects as opposed to just assembling systems
designed in the United States.

Ireland's largest computer employer, Digital Equipment Corporation
was once credited with contributing several percentage points to
the country's gross national product -- until the company
announced a devastating layoff one month ago. DEC officials said
they would dump 780 manufacturing employees in Galway, western
Ireland, but assigned a priority to keeping more than 350
employees engaged in software development.

Even as DEC was leaving, Sun announced plans to establish a
European software center in Dublin, where it "will manage
development and localization of its Solaris software environment."
The company press release quoted SunSoft President Edward Zander
saying that, "Ireland, with its large pool of engineering and
software talent, is the ideal location for us to manage software
development to meet the needs of the European Unix market."

In the computer field, the globalization of labor markets has
meant the steady diminution of whole employment categories within
U.S. borders. First to be relocated were assembly jobs, then more
recently, data entry, technical support functions and other "back
office" jobs. The logic that renders an ever-increasing number of
job categories as expendable now threatens the creative
intellectual tasks once considered the nearly exclusive preserve
of American programmers. The shift of software development
overseas calls into question President Clinton's promise to create
more american "high-wage, high-quality jobs of the future," a
useful campaign slogan that may become the political epitaph of
his administration.

[Bill Tucker, 55, worked 26 years for IBM as a systems engineer
performing technical marketing services to the company's overseas
subsidiaries. Tucker joined IBM in 1963 in The Netherlands, moved
to Poughkeepsie, N.Y. and then Palo Alto, before retiring in 1990.
Currently, he is pursuing a masters of liberal arts degree at
Stanford University and assisting in the publication of the
correspondence of Martin Luther King, Jr. Tucker is a member of
the Palo Alto chapter of CPSR.]

For most of its existence, IBM has been known as a company that
treated employees well. Legend says that no one has ever been
laid off, even during what's been known up to now as the Great
Depression. There was even a mantra, "Respect for the
Individual." Lower level managers frequently forgot the words,
but many upper level managers took it seriously. One of its
manifestations was IBM's open door policy, which meant that if an
employee was dissatisfied with an answer from a manager at one
level, she or he could take the issue up the hierarchy, all the
way to the top. The issue involved was often an employee
grievance. If a complaint was serious and could be documented, and
the employee was willing to make enough enemies, a manager could
usually be found at some level who was willing to redress it. On
the other hand, the knowledge that after it was all over you would
probably have to find a new career path discouraged many people
from pursuing legitimate grievances. Nevertheless, this policy
and others like it contributed substantially to employee morale
and self-respect.

These policies were established by IBM's founder, T. J. Watson,
who is said to have regarded employees as the company's most
valuable resource. During his tenure, and that of his son, T. J.
Watson, Jr., a huge intangible asset was created for IBM, in the
form of employee good will. Good management of this asset turned
a small manufacturer of industrial clocks into a huge, highly
successful and diversified company.

Then, at some point, IBM management started to trade on and even
liquidate that good-will asset rather than nurture it. Employees
began to notice this change in attitude as long ago as 1970.
However, IBM only acknowledged what was going on publicly in 1986.
In that year, IBM management told the world that its business
outlook did not look good and that the solution was to reduce the
number of employees. What had been regarded as Assets in the
Watson era were moved to the Liabilities side of the Balance Sheet
by the new management.

The main feature of the 1986 announcement was a plan whereby
bonuses would be given for early retirement. As this pogrom, that
is, program, was being implemented, it became clear that it wasn't
to be a complete cure. If reducing the workforce was the way to
solve IBM's emerging difficulties, even greater cut-backs would be
necessary. Most IBM'ers expected a second plan to follow closely
on the heels of the first. However, IBM management waited three
years to introduce the new program. They waited much too long,
because by 1989 the company was in deep trouble. Since then, IBM
has seemingly instituted a permanent program for shrinking the
workforce. No one, in the company or out, has any idea where it
will end.

Part of the 1989 plan was the introduction of Social Darwinism as
a personnel policy. Groups of 100 or so employees are put onto
lists, which are ranked according to each employee's perceived
relative contribution to company welfare. People are told where
they are on the list. Those at the top are eligible for promotion;
those at the bottom are candidates for termination. A management
committee maintains the list. Where IBM formerly had 100 people
working enthusiastically toward a common goal, it now has 100
employees in dog-eat-dog competition with each other.

Below are two examples of the experience of people leaving IBM.
The first is based on an article that appeared in the _New York
Times_, The second is about a woman friend on the east coast who
does not wish to be identified.

Webster Brown's story appeared in the business section of the
_Times_ on March 22, 1992. After more than twenty years
with IBM, Brown, an engineer, was transferred to a job for which
he was ill-prepared. He soon found himself at the bottom of the
local ranking list, or as he puts it, at the wrong end of the
curve. However, he was old enough that he could take an early
retirement offer rather than be terminated. He notes that, "IBM
has initiated a psychological reign of terror over employees."

The woman's story began with some helpful advice from her then
manager. He said that if she wanted to advance professionally, she
should try to broaden the range of her work experience. After a
year of searching and interviewing, she found a job that looked
like it would provide the necessary experience. Its only
disadvantage was that it added an hour to her daily commute.
However, six months into the new job, the new manager told her
that the job was being eliminated. He said that she shouldn't
worry too much about this, though, because IBM would find her
another similar job, probably in the same geographical area. At
the time, she thought she was being treated unfairly, but she
didn't protest. For one thing, even though she was the newest
person in the department, she thought she was performing better
than most of the others. She suspected that the real reasons that
her job was being eliminated were that she was a woman and that
she had the least seniority.

After about a month, her latest manager told her that IBM had
found her a new job, but that it was 1,000 miles away. Nobody
could tell her much about the job. Finally, IBM said that she had
to either accept the job or leave IBM. In the latter case, she
would get one week's pay for each year of service. She decided to
leave. She reasoned that with IBM shrinking everywhere, any job
available in the other location was going to be one that nobody
else wanted. This could be because the manager there had a
psychological problem or because it was simply an impossible job.
Typical among the latter are customer-service jobs for hopeless
products. In these, you spend your entire day dealing with
customers who are justifiably angry and impossible to satisfy. In
any case, it was likely to be a job that was difficult to perform
well in, so she would probably soon find herself at the bottom of
the local ranking list. This could result in termination without
any severance pay, into an unfamiliar and small local job market.

So she started sending out resumes and before long she had two job
offers. Then, three days before she planned to tell IBM that she
was leaving, her manager announced that IBM had changed its mind
and she could keep her current job! She was dumbfounded, to the
surprise of her manager, who had expected her to jump at this
opportunity. Three days later she told IBM that she wanted to
leave and wanted the severance pay, and the company agreed to
this. She figured that the offer to stay was probably only a
temporary reprieve, and that in the next cutback she would be the
first one asked to leave for the same reasons as before. Moreover,
the severance pay and the two job offers might not be there next
time. She was right about the reprieve; since she left half the
jobs in the group have been eliminated.

IBM workforce cutbacks are conducted in manner that can only be
compared to that of a Napoleonic army in chaotic retreat. No two
managers or personnel administrators have the same understanding
of any policy. The final insult comes in the reams of obscure
text, designed by IBM's lawyers, which routinely closes with the
advice that you should consult your own lawyer if this confuses
you. The only thing your own lawyer can tell you about this is
that a gang of Yale-educated criminals has put together a
masterpiece of intimidation, carefully designed to maximize IBM's
advantage over you.

A notable aspect of IBM's problems over the last several years is
the extent to which blame is laid at the feet of the employees
rather than management. It's either because we spend too much time
hanging around the water cooler or simply "...because we are too
menny" (Father Time, in Thomas Hardy's _Jude the Obscure_). Until
the recent announcement of John Aker's long overdue departure,
there has been no hint that 15 years of disastrous management just
might be the problem instead. Of course, the huge overpaid
committee at the top could hardly admit this, because that would
call into question the justification for their grossly high
compensation packages.

HIGH TECH WAGES ARE DROPPING: _Computerworld_'s sixth annual
salary survey, reported in the _San Francisco Chronicle_ last
fall, notes that computer and Information Systems [IS] wages are
leveling off and even declining, after years of steady growth. And
as in other industries, women's IS salaries are lower than men's
in most categories, especially in management. Consulting fees are
flat as well, and may even go down according to the Independent
Computer Consultants Association (ICCA) survey. "There seems to be
no economic news that indicate that they go anywhere but down,"
says ICCA head Raj Khera in the Maryland-based _Warfield's
Business Record_. "Because so many computer professionals have
been laid off lately, and because consulting work seems a natural
way for them to earn income between jobs, the competition for
consulting work has stiffened, and in turn depressed fees." [ICCA
has a SIG forum up on Compuserve or call 1 800 GET-ICCA].

POISON CHIPS: "Chip Firms Won't Ban Suspect Chemicals" was the
headline in the _SF Chronicle_ last fall, in the wake of an IBM
study on chemicals in semiconductor manufacturing. "But at least
two companies - INTEL Corp. of Santa Clara... and ADVANCED MICRO
DEVICES... are offering employees the right to transfer jobs if
they feel that they will be endangered by touching or breathing
the chemicals in the chip-manufacturing process". Among 30 women
who became pregnant, 10 suffered miscarriages the study
determined. Reports from a more comprehensive study by the
University of California at Davis for the Semiconductor Industry
Association, released in December, echoed the IBM study findings.
The SIA report shows a 20% to 40% higher chance of miscarriage
among women workers in chip fab. The _San Jose Mercury News_
quotes one industry executive, "We'll do what we can to take any
actions that are warranted to protect workers." Right.

VERSATRONEX WORKERS SAY UNION, COMPANY SHUTS DOWN: Workers at
Sunnyvale-based VERSATRONEX, a contract circuit board assembler,
walked out on strike back in October over low-pay, no benefits and
hazardous working conditions. Regarded as the first strike at an
electronics firm in Silicon Valley ever, the workers returned
after the NLRB filed a formal complaint against the company. After
it became clear that the workers were going to pursue official
union representation (by the United Electrical, Radio and Machine
Workers of America, aka UE), the company announced it was shutting
down. It closed its doors on January 29, putting about 130 workers
onto the street.

ELSEWHERE IN THE INDUSTRY: Ah, IBM. What can you say about a
company that loses $21 billion in market value in one year?
Anyway, they made it official: 1993 cutbacks will include the
computer giant's first layoffs in half a century, reports the
_Wall Street Journal_. IBM had always prided themselves on their
"no lay-offs" policy -- they had relied on other terms and tactics
for achieving the same end. IBM employed 301,542 world-wide on
Dec. 31st, 1992, down from 406,000 in 1985. In the wake of IBM's
implosion, SUPERCOMPUTER SYSTEMS is closing doors, and laying off
320 (IBM was funding the firm, and withdrew its support). Money-
losing PRODIGY, the IBM and SEARS joint venture (why does that not
inspire confidence?) is rumored to be in trouble, with cuts in its
workforce predicted. DIGITAL EQUIPMENT laid off 6,000 in the last
quarter of 1992. CYPRESS SEMICONDUCTOR is closing its last Silicon
Valley plant, shifting work to cheaper labor markets, and laying
off 400 -- this is especially noteworthy because president T. J.
Rodgers, the outspoken libertarian gadfly, made such a big deal
about staying competitive in Silicon Valley. BORLAND dumped
350 people, 15% of their workforce. EVEREX declared bankruptcy
last month, and 200 more workers were dumped -- the company has
laid off 900 workers since last June. Meanwhile, the approximately
750 remaining EVEREX employees found out that the company dropped
its health insurance plan, without telling them. LOTUS closed its
disk duplication and shrink wrap plant in Puerto Rico, laying off
100 -- it says site licenses and electronic distribution have
dramatically changed software distribution. The plant was all of
seven years old.

THE FUTURE'S SO BRIGHT...: "Despite some encouraging signs that
the economy is picking up, Silicon Valley companies continue to
slash their workforces" reports the San Jose-based _Business
Journal_. Valley companies laid off, or said they would lay off,
or fired or offered early retirement to more than 6,300 employees
in the fourth quarter, according to a survey by the _California
Job Journal_ and additional research by the _Business Journal_.
An employment analyst with the state said he doesn't expect to see
the valley's employment picture brighten until the end of 1993.
Solid figures are hard to come by, notes Michele McCormick, a
spokeswoman for the _Job Journal_, because 80 percent of
California's workers are employed by small private businesses
that don't announce layoffs.

AND WORKERS RESPOND: Older workers (well, not so old -- some are
as young as 40) angry about layoffs and reassignments are filing
more age-bias suits. Ex-UNISYS employees are suing over lost
health benefits resulting from the company's decision to stop
providing the benefit to retirees. Former KODAK workers have sued
both DEC and KODAK, saying they lost benefits and job security
when KODAK "spun off" the workers to a new subsidiary. And BOEING
engineers and technical workers went on strike for one day in
January.